Playing around with my camera while I was waiting for Alex’s bus to arrive, I found a few interesting things:
A feather trapped in the branches of my hedge.
Leaves glued to the ice, so transparent that their skeletons are showing.
I liked the way the lens focused on the twigs, rendering the house in the background an afterthought.
Now that I have a memory card for the camera I bought before Christmas, I’ll start taking it out more often. My phone takes decent pictures, but it can’t beat 16.1 megapixels. I just have to learn how to use it to its full advantage.
Winter is being such a bitch this year, particularly on my roof. Granted there are many people in the neighbourhood who have it worse: it seems on every street there are houses missing so much of their eavestroughs that I can see their rafters from the street. And trust me, no one wants their rafters showing.
In an effort to not be one of them, I’ve tried a couple of different methods to relieve my roof of the eight inches of ice that is threatening to pull down what’s left of my eavestroughs. Chipping at it didn’t work – it’s far too solid. So I figured, why not throw some salt up there? As soon as we have a nice day, maybe it’ll melt from the top rather than the bottom as it has done for the past couple of weeks, causing the residual water to come in around my window frames – inside the house.
The salt, however, seems to be rather picky when it comes to the roof. It melts the ice just fine on the sidewalk.
After putting almost a full ten pounds of salt on my roof, what do I have?
This, first of all:
:
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It would seem the salt has created some interesting formations out of my icicles.
What else?
Everything dripping off my roof is crystalised. I have white splattered all over my exterior walls, I have white steps at the front of my house, and best of all, I have a saltwater cascade dripping down my windows and onto my hardwood floors. And still, I have eight inches of ice on my roof.
The good news? The mold that I’m positive is growing on the other side of my drywall will be well preserved.
First it was the ice storm. Remember that? Back in December, just before Christmas I slipped on the ice and hit my head on a concrete step. Result: concussion. Thank goodness I had the lovely villainous Navigator1965 to cover for me.
Then there were the frost quakes. They were fun.
And let’s not forget the icicles, that led to the destruction of my eavestroughs.
And now? To add insult to injury, the ice is laughing at me:
Can you see the big grin? Just in case, I drew eyebrows, eyes, a mustache and a goatee on him:
Have I mentioned lately that I’m sick of winter?
The wind blows where ever it wants to blow. It’s warming up outside and so the gusts are fierce. It’s days like today when branches weakened from the weight of snow and ice come down on roofs and cars (two things I’ve been having problems with of late). Times like this I listen to the creaking of the trees around my house and I want to say to the wind:
Wind, dude, stop blowin’ already. Get outta my trees. C’mon man. Ye’r makin’ me nervous, dude.
But you can’t reason with the wind. It blows where ever it wants.
Like ice. It forms when it snows, and then the snow melts and the water sits there until it freezes into sheets of slippery pavement that have me flailing as I deliver my newspapers. Like the wind, I want to say to the ice:
Ice! Stop being so damn slippery!
But you can’t reason with the ice. It keeps on being slick. So much so that I thought this morning, as I slid around the block not moving my feet because the wind was blowing me on this ice, maybe this combo ain’t so bad after all.
Dude.
Remember the pretty icicles?
Look! No more icicles!
And no more eavestroughs too!
*grumblegrumblegrumble*
